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The Iranian armed forces conducted a series of large-scale exercises in January to prepare for and deter an attack in the last days of the Trump administration. These exercises follow Tehran ramping up its nuclear program to pressure the Biden administration and set conditions for anticipated negotiationson the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran appears to have been concerned that these actions and a desire to set back the nuclear program in the Trump administrations final days might prompt either the US or Israel to launch a military strike. The regime conducted a dramatic array of military exercises and high-level inspections of the units and capabilities it would need to defend against and respond to such a strike. The armed forces revealed in that process a glimpse of the approaches they would take in such a conflict.

The exercises began on January 2, 2021, and concluded on January 23, and another began on February 11. They involved ground, aviation, naval, and air units from almost all of Irans military services. The participation of the most senior commanders from the conventional military (the Artesh) and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) underscores the high priority the regime places on reinforcing deterrence and signaling Iranian capabilities.

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Iran Prepared to Deter and Defend Against a Military Strike While Increasing Leverage for Talks with the Biden Administration Homeland Security Today...

The superspreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories

By DAVID KLEPPER, FARNOUSH AMIRI and BEATRICE DUPUY

https://apnews.com/article/conspiracy-theories-iran-only-on-ap-media-misinformation-bfca6d5b236a29d61c4dd38702495ffe

As the coronavirus spread across the globe, so too did speculation about its origins. Perhaps the virus escaped from a lab. Maybe it was engineered as a bioweapon.

Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, guesswork and propaganda flourished.

College professors with no evidence or training in virology were touted as experts. Anonymous social media users posed as high-level intelligence officials. And from China to Iran to Russia to the United States, governments amplified claims for their own motives.

The Associated Press collaborated with the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensic Research Lab on a nine-month investigation to identify the people and organizations behind some of the most viral misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.

Their claims were explosive. Their evidence was weak. These are the superspreaders.

FRANCIS BOYLE

WHO HE IS: A Harvard trained law professor at the University of Illinois, Boyle drafted a 1989 law banning biological weapons and has advised the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Palestinian Authority.

Boyle has no academic degree in virology or biology but is a longstanding critic of research on pathogens. He has claimed Israeli intelligence was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; that SARS, the swine flu and Ebola have been genetically modified; and that West Nile virus and Lyme disease escaped from a U.S. biowarfare lab. He has also claimed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates was involved in the spread of Zika.

COVID CLAIM: Boyle says the coronavirus is a genetically engineered bioweapon that escaped from a high-level lab in Wuhan, China. He maintains it shows signs of nanotechnological tinkering and the insertion of proteins from HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. He alleges that U.S. researchers helped create it, and that thousands of doctors, scientists, and elected leaders are conspiring to hide the truth.

Boyle promoted his claim in an email to a list of news organizations and personal contacts on Jan. 24, 2020. That same day, he was interviewed on a podcast called Geopolitics and Empire. That podcast was cited by a little-known Indian website, GreatGameIndia, and went viral, with Boyles comments picked up and featured in Iranian-state TV, Russian state media, and fringe websites in the U.S. and around the world. Hes since repeated his claims on Alex Jones show Infowars.

EVIDENCE? Boyle bases his argument on circumstantial evidence: the presence of a Biosafety Level 4 lab in Wuhan, the fact that other viruses have escaped from other labs in the past, and his belief that governments around the world are engaged in a secret arms race over biological weapons.

Biosafety Level 4 labs - or BSL4 labs - have the highest level of biosafety precautions.

It seemed to me that obviously, this came out of the Wuhan BSL 4, Boyle told The Associated Press, dismissing the accepted explanation that the virus emerged from the Wuhan market as completely preposterous.

A World Heath Organization team concluded it was extremely unlikely the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, and other experts have said the virus shows no signs of genetic manipulation.

___

GREATGAMEINDIA

WHAT IT IS: A website that was an early promoter of the theory that the coronavirus was engineered.

Its Jan. 26, 2020, story on Coronavirus bioweapon-How China Stole the Coronavirus From Canada and Weaponized It was picked up by far-right financial blog Zero Hedge and shared to thousands of social media users before it was promoted by conservative website RedStateWatcher and received more than 6 million engagements.

COVID CLAIM: GreatGameIndia claims that the virus, which has now killed more than 2 million people worldwide, was first found in the lungs of a Saudi man and then sent to labs in the Netherlands and then Canada, where it was stolen by Chinese scientists. The article relies in part on speculation from Dany Shoham, a virologist and former lieutenant colonel in Israeli military intelligence.

Shoham was quoted discussing the possibility that COVID is linked to bioweapon research in a Jan. 26, 2020, article in the conservative U.S. newspaper The Washington Times. In that article, Shoham was quoted saying there was no evidence to support the idea that the virus has escaped from a lab, but GreatGameIndia did not include that context in its piece.

We do stand by our report, said website co-founder Shelley Kasli wrote in an email. In fact, recently Canadians released documents which corroborated our findings with Chinese scientists... A lot of information is still classified.

EVIDENCE? The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a World Health Organization panel announced this month, saying an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab was unlikely.

Americas top scientists have likewise concluded the virus is of natural origin, citing clues in its genome and its similarity to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, who has been studying the virus since its genome was first recorded, has said it is clear that the virus was not engineered or accidentally released.

It is something that is clearly selected in nature, Racaniello said. There are two examples where the sequence tells us that humans had no hand in making this virus because they would not have known to do these things.

___

THE CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALIZATION

WHAT IT IS: The Montreal-based center publishes articles on global politics and policy, including a healthy dose of conspiracy theories on vaccines and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Its led by Michel Chossudovsky, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and a conspiracy theorist who has argued the U.S. military can control the weather.

The center publishes authors from around the world many of whom have advanced baseless claims about the origins of the outbreak. In February, for instance, the center published an interview with Igor Nikulin suggesting the coronavirus was a U.S. bioweapon created to target Chinese people.

The centers website, globalresearch.ca., has become deeply enmeshed in Russias broader disinformation and propaganda ecosystem by peddling anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, according to a 2020 U.S. State Department report which found that seven of its supposed writers do not even exist but were created by Russian military intelligence.

COVID CLAIM: While the center has published several articles about the virus, one suggesting it originated in the U.S. caught the attention of top Chinese officials.

On March 12, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian retweeted an article published by the center titled: Chinas Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

This article is very much important to each and every one of us, he posted in English on Twitter. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US.

He also tweeted: It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation.

The story by Larry Romanoff, a regular author at the center, cites several debunked theories, including one that members of the U.S. military brought the virus to China during the Military World Games in fall 2019. Romanoff concludes that it has now been proven that the virus originated from outside of China, despite scientific consensus that it did.

EVIDENCE? The World Health Organization has concluded that the coronavirus emerged in China, where the first cases and deaths were reported. No evidence has surfaced to suggest the virus was imported into China by the U.S.

Chossudovsky and Romanoff did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment. Romanoffs biography lists him as a visiting professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, but he is not listed among the universitys faculty. The university did not respond to an email asking about Romanoffs employment.

Romanoffs original article was taken down in the spring, but Zhaos tweet remains up.

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IGOR NIKULIN

WHO IS HE? A four-time failed political candidate, Nikulin is prominently quoted in Russian state media and fringe publications in the west as a biologist and former weapons inspector in Iraq who served on a U.N. commission on biological and chemical weapons in the 1990s.

COVID CLAIM: Nikulin argues the U.S. created the virus and used it to attack China. He first voiced the belief in a Jan. 20, 2020, story by Zvezda, a state media outlet tied to the Russian military. He appeared on Russian state TV at least 18 times between Jan. 27, 2020, and late April of that year.

Once the virus reached the U.S., Nikulin changed his theory, saying globalists were using the virus to depopulate the earth.

Nikulin has expressed support for weaponizing misinformation to hurt the U.S. in the past. On his website, he suggests claiming the U.S. created HIV as a way to weaken America from within. Russian intelligence mounted a similar 1980s disinformation campaign dubbed Operation INFEKTION.

If you prove and declare... that the virus was bred in American laboratories, the American economy will collapse under the onslaught of billions of lawsuits by millions of AIDS carriers around the world, Nikulin wrote on his website.

EVIDENCE? Nikulin offered no evidence to support his assertions, and there are reasons to doubt his veracity.

Former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler, for whom Nikulin claims to have worked, said he had no memory of Nikulin, and that his story sounded sloppily fabricated, and not credible.

No U.N. records could be found to confirm his employment.

In an exchange with the AP over Facebook, Nikulin insisted his claims and background are accurate, though he said some records from U.N. work were destroyed in an American bombing during the Iraq invasion.

When told that Butler didnt know him, Nikulin responded This is his opinion.

___

GREG RUBINI

WHO HE IS: Greg Rubini is the name of an internet conspiracy theorist who claims to have high-level contacts in intelligence and listed his location on Twitter as classified, until he was kicked off the platform. His posts have been retweeted thousands of times by supporters of QAnon, a conspiracy theory centered on the baseless belief that Trump is waging a secret campaign against enemies in the deep state and a secret sect of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.

COVID CLAIM: Rubini has tweeted that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus and that it was used as a bioweapon to reduce the worlds population and undermine Trump.

EVIDENCE? Rubinis doesnt appear to be the intelligence insider that he pretends to be.

Buzzfeed attempted to track down Rubini last year and determined it is the alias of a 61-year-old Italian man who has worked in marketing and music promotions. A previous version of his Twitter bio indicates he is a fan of classic rock and the films of Stanley Kubrick.

Attempts to reach Rubini online and through business contacts were unsuccessful.

Rubini has bristled at efforts to verify his claims. When a social media user asked: My question to you @GregRubini is, Where and what is your proof? Rubini responded curtly: And my question is: why should I give it to you?

Twitter suspended Rubinis account in November 2020 for repeated violations of its policies.

______

KEVIN BARRETT

WHO HE IS: A former lecturer on Islam at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Barrett left the university amid criticism for his claims that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were orchestrated by people linked to the U.S. and Israeli governments.

Barrett calls himself a professional conspiracy theorist, for want of a better term and has argued government conspiracies were behind the 2004 Madrid bombing, the 2005 London bombing, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

COVID CLAIM: Barrett said he is 80% sure coronavirus was created by elements within the U.S. government as a bioweapon and used to attack China.

Iran was a secondary target, he has argued. Writing for Irans PressTV, he said the early outbreak in that country suggests that the Americans and/or their partners the Israelis... may have deliberately attacked Iran.

Barrett further detailed his views during an interview with the AP.

It seemed fairly obvious to me that the first hypothesis one would look at when something as extraordinary as this COVID pandemic hits, is that it would be a US bio-war strike, he said.

EVIDENCE? Barrett cited reports that the US warned its allies in November 2019 about a dangerous virus emerging from China. Barrett said thats long before authorities in China knew about the severity of the outbreak.

Official sources have denied issuing any warning. If the U.S. did know about the virus that soon, it was likely thanks to intelligence sources within China, which may have known about the virus as early as November 2019, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

___

LUC MONTAGNIER

WHO HE IS: Montagnier is a world-renowned virologist who won the Nobel prize in 2008 for discovering HIV.

COVID CLAIM: During an April interview with the French news channel CNews, Montagnier claimed that the coronavirus did not originate in nature and was manipulated. Montagnier said that in the process of making the vaccine for AIDS, someone took the genetic material and added it to the coronavirus. Montagnier cites a retracted paper published in January from Indian scientists who had said they had found sequences of HIV in the coronavirus. AP made multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact Montagnier.

EVIDENCE: Experts who have looked at the genome sequence of the virus have said it has no HIV-1 sequences. In January, Indian scientists published a paper on bioRXIV, a repository for scientific papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a traditional scientific journal. The paper said that the scientists had found uncanny similarity of unique inserts in COVID-19 and HIV. Social media users picked up the paper as proof that the virus was engineered. As soon as it was published, the scientific community widely debunked the paper on social media. It was later withdrawn.

___

SUPREME LEADER ALI KHAMENEI and HOSSEIN SALAMI

WHO THEY ARE: Khamenei is the second and current Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has the final say on all matters of state, including the economy, military and health divisions.

Since being elected to office in 1981, Khamenei has maintained his skeptical view of the U.S. as Irans foremost enemy. The tensions between the two countries boiled over in 2018 when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed crippling sanctions. At the time, Khamenei remarked, I said from the first day: Dont trust America.

Hossein Salami was appointed by Khamenei as commander of Irans Revolutionary Guard in April 2019. He leads the countrys paramilitary force that oversees Irans ballistic missile program and responds to threats from both inside and outside the country.

COVID CLAIM: Salami declared on March 5, 2020, that Iran was engaged in a fight against a virus that might be the product of an American biological attack. On those grounds, Salami ordered a Ground Force Biological Defense Maneuver to test the countrys ability to combat a biological attack. Beginning March 16, the Ground Force, in close collaboration with the Health Ministry, began holding nationwide biodefense drills.

Khamenei was among the first and most powerful world leaders to suggest the coronavirus could be a biological weapon created by the U.S. During his annual address on March 22 to millions of Iranians for the Persian New Year, Khamenei questioned why the U.S. would offer aid to countries like Iran if they themselves were suffering and accused of making the virus.

Khamenei went on to refuse U.S. assistance, saying possibly (U.S.) medicine is a way to spread the virus more. Last month, he refused to accept coronavirus vaccines manufactured in Britain and the U.S., calling them forbidden. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

EVIDENCE: There is no evidence that the U.S. created the virus or used it as a weapon to attack Iran.

__

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The superspreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories - The Associated Press

When the news broke that Susan Bayh had died, several memories of her floated to the forefront.

Strangely, the most prominent one may have been the most trivial.

It was from 1992. She and her husband, Evan, were campaigning in Evansville as part of a bus tour with the newly anointed Democratic Party ticket.

Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al and Tipper Gore were traveling across Southern Indiana in the company of the Bayhs. It was one of those charged moments in American history, a time when the nation was poised to make a generational shift in power. Bill Clinton was about to become the first baby boomer president.

The presumption was that Al Gore likely would succeed him in the Oval Office. And Evan Bayh, who was just in his middle 30s then, already was being touted as a future presidential prospect.

The future shimmered like gold for the three seemingly charmed couples.

Id interviewed both Bill Clinton and Al Gore but was lingering to gather more color when Susan Bayh spotted me. She was walking with Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore. She motioned for the two of them to come with her so she could introduce us.

The four of us chatted for a few minutes.

As we talked, I thought about the way things were changing in this country.

And the ways things werent changing.

It became clear within the space of just a few minutes that these three women were at least as capable and, in fact, were probably more capable than their husbands.

Yet, they were the ones struggling to determine what roles they could play as their spouses strode destinys stage just how many of their gifts these women could reveal without offending a state and nation that both wanted and feared change.

Flash forward nearly three decades to now.

Hillary Clinton is a lightning rod for much of the terrifying animosity loose in this land.

Tipper and Al Gore live apart, their union a casualty of their high-profile and high-stress lives.

And Susan Bayh, sadly, tragically, is dead.

She was only 61.

In these hours just after her passing, I find myself thinking about the heavy toll we impose on those who step forward to lead us. Too often, we strip them of their humanity. We consider them caricatures, rather than people who breathe and bleed just like the rest of us.

Susan helped me realize that.

I did not know her as well as others did, but she and I had some substantive conversations when she was Indianas first lady. In one, she described what making big decisions did not just to leaders, but also to those close to them. The emotional costs imposed on the entire family, she said, could be overwhelming.

At the time we talked, Susan and her husband often were dismissed in Indiana political circles as animate versions of Barbie and Ken dolls. People focused more attention on the fact that she had been a beauty queen Miss Southern California, no less than on her sterling academic record at two top-flight schools, Berkeley for her undergraduate work and the University of Southern California for her law degree. Nor did they seem to notice that, despite her youth, she held her own with the finest legal minds in the country.

Physical attractiveness can be both blessing and curse. The sheer sunniness of Susan Bayhs appearance, the radiance of her smile, in some ways obscured the depths of her character.

In death, the tendency is to caricature people once again, to sweeten memories of them to help make grief more palatable. This is particularly true when the departed could be as charmingly affable as she could be.

But to do so denies Susan Bayhs immense strength.

The guess here is that she watched over those she loved her husband and her twin sons, especially with the ferocity of a warrior priestess. She nurtured those she cared about, but she also saw that they were protected.

Susan Bayh did it with a smile on her face because thats what people expected from someone who looked like her. She did so because she was smart, certainly wise enough to understand that much.

Her family says her passing leaves this world a darker place.

Yes, it does.

May she rest in peace.

John Krull is director of Franklin Colleges Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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KRULL COLUMN: Susan Bayh and the steel beneath the smile - Evening News and Tribune

RALEIGH In the winter of 1994, when First Lady Hillary Clintons plane became ice-bound in Washington, D.C., and she was unable to fly to Raleigh for her appearance as one of three keynote speaker for the ninth annual Emerging Issues Forum, university officials scrambled to find closed-circuit television technologies to turn her appearance into one of the states first-ever virtual conferences.

Something similar happened in 2010 when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was scheduled to speak about the creative visions for the future of North Carolina education, but was unable to physically attend the conference because of a Washington snowstorm. So he walked to his office, fired up an early virtual teleconferencing system and joined Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Manchester Craftsman Guilds Bill Strickland on the topic of crafting creative solutions.

Even in the earliest days of the internet and before Zoom became a ubiquitous platform, NCStates think-and-do institute has been charged with uncovering, considering and finding solutions for issues that will affect the lives of all North Carolinians, even if that requires technologies of the future to make sure it happens.

Next week, Feb. 15-18, IEI will host its 35th annual forum in Raleigh, four days of virtual meetings in the final installment of thewww.reconnectnc.orgseries.

What started in 1986 as a request by the late Chancellor Bruce Poulton to Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. to create an annual forum to address emerging issues has grown into alively nonpartisan institutewith a dozen and a half staffers, led since 2017 by Director Leslie Boney. Fittingly, the institute that was created in 2002 moved into the Hunt Library when it opened in 2012.

The idea for the forum and the institute that emerged from it was simple: to ask world and national leaders to consider issues identified by IEI that would face North Carolinians and to begin identifying solutions, from healthcare to biotechnology to education to the ongoing rural and urban divide.

I always wanted North Carolina to follow in its tradition of being first, says Hunt, a two-time NCState graduate and North Carolinas only four-term governor (1977-85, 1993-2001). I always wanted us to be on the cutting edge. I wanted us to spot the issues first and focus on what the cutting-edge ideas are that we need to know about, then begin to figure out how we could do something about them.

It was not a small undertaking. Initially, Hunt relied on his vast network of world and national leaders, making sure he had balanced voices participating. In 2005, when former Democratic President Bill Clinton spoke at Reynolds Coliseum, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also addressed the topic of Making Healthcare Work in North Carolina. The list of world thought leaders including former Presidents Clinton and Jimmy Carter, U.S. senators and representatives, cabinet members, business leaders and journalists is exactly what Hunts Facebook friends list would look like.

Its the kind of thing NCState ought to be about, Hunt says. NCState was created to involve the people and find practical ways of solving problems for the people of the state. We ought to be getting ideas out to the people, stimulating their ideas about those issues, and encouraging them to develop new and better approaches.

Some of that is done at a high level, general level. Some of its done locally. Theres always a need to spot the next issues. What has great potential to improve our lives? What do we need to learn about, and then what do we need to do about it?

First and foremost, IEI is about improving North Carolina. But its also about reaching out to the best minds on the planet to discuss the ways to make that happen.

We absolutely admit to having a North Carolina lens, Boney says. But we are agnostic about where a great idea comes from. It could come from another country. It could come from another state. It could come from a small town in eastern or western North Carolina.

We are idea enthusiasts. And so we try to collect ideas.

Hunt is the collector of idea-makers. As was always the case during his political career, few people could say no when he asked them to participate.

If youve ever been at the other end of a Jim Hunt conversation, it often concludes with a request, says Chancellor Randy Woodson. Whether its over the phone or in person, you can feel him grabbing your elbow, shaking your hand, gently pulling you forward, and then asking you the question Will you do this?

And everyone says the same thing, I couldnt say no to Gov. Hunt. Im so proud that NCState has been associated with the institute through the years. It has provided great leadership.

Everyone has that same bruise on their triceps, and Hunt almost always gets done what he wants.

Over the past few years, Hunt has stepped back and Asheville business leader Jack Cecil has stepped up as board chair. Boney was hired from the UNC System Office in 2017 to lead the institute and develop a different kind of outreach and engagement, turning the once-a-year forum into a twice-a-year traveling roadshow to include more communities across the state.

Boney has made some tweaks to the institutes charge and those changes have been the basis for the dozens of local and community initiatives represented in the Reconnect NC programs, showing how organic solutions can be scaled up for greater change. Topics were crowdsourced from engaged participants from across the state and ideas were shared at events in Asheville, Charlotte and Raleigh.

We started out with the idea that this was going to be a great chance for North Carolina to learn from the nation and the world, Boney says. Now, we are more likely to use the forum to learn from the nation, the world and our own communities.

Second, we have tried to ensure that we arent just sharing information at the forum and inspiring people and then going home. We want to do those things, then have them go find an organization in the state that can take an idea and do something with it, or find a way for the institute to move forward with that idea itself.

Third, the original idea was that the way change happens is top down, that someone hears an idea and passes a law. We hope that we are able to show that ideas can go from middle out. Change can be led by faith institutions in a community, local government, nonprofits or informal coalitions on a community level. More and more, we are paying a little bit more attention to the power of local communities to launch change.

In other words, even a forum dedicated to the idea of identifying emerging issues can find new ways to identify and discuss new and ongoing solutions.

Leslies leadership has really created this opportunity for more community engagement through community-based forums, really lifting them up across all the regions in our state, Woodson says.

1986: Innovation and Competition: The Challenge to America1987: Winning In The Global Economy1988: Taking Control of the Future. (featuring Bill Clinton)1989: Education For a Competitive Economy1990: Global Changes In The Environment: Our Common Future (featuring Carl Sagan)1991: Changes in Europe: Challenges for America (featuring Jimmy Carter)1992: Priorities for Americas Future1993: Strengthening America: New Economic Strategies1994: Investing in Health: An American Agenda. (featuring Hillary Clinton)1995: Conflict, Competition, Cooperation: Power Politics in a Changing World. (featuring Ambassador Madeleine Albright)1996: The Knowledge Explosion: What the Payoff for Americans?1997: Economic Forces: Shaping the Next Half-Century1998: People and Planet: A Fragile Partnership1999: Global Economic Storms (featuring Al Gore)2000: Shaping our Common Future2001: First in America: Charting the Course for Excellent Schools2002: Biotechnology and Humanity at the Crossroads of a New Era2003: Jump Starting Innovation: Government, Universities & Entrepreneurs2004: Creative Responses for Global Economic Change2005: My Health Is Your Business: Making Healthcare Work in North Carolina (featuring Bill Clinton)2006: Financing the Future (featuring Steve Forbes)2007: Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina (featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings)2008: North Carolinas Energy Futures: Realizing a State of Opportunity (featuring Jeffrey Immelt)2009: Changing Landscapes: Building the Good Growth State? (featuring David Brooks)2010: Creativity, iNC (featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan)2011: An Idea Exchange for Healthcare (featuring Indra Nooyi)2012: Investing in Generation Z2013: @Manufacturing Works2014: Teachers and the Great Economic Debate2015: Innovation Reconstructed2016: FutureWork2017 Focus Forum: Kidonomics: The Economics of Early Childhood Investment2018: Kidonomics: Investing Early in Our Future.

Fall 2018: Reconnect to Community (featuring David Brooks) | Asheville, NCSpring 2019: Reconnect to Rural and Urban | Raleigh, NCFall 2019: Reconnect to Economic Opportunity | Charlotte, NCSpring 2020: Reconnect to Technological Opportunity | Raleigh, NCFall 2020: Reconnect to Well-Being | via webinarSpring 2021: Reconnect for the Future | via webinar

(C) NCSU

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As Emerging Issues Forum goes virtual, a look back at its history of dealing with hot issues - WRAL Tech Wire

Mass shootings and other atrocities still afflict the country. But before Trump ran for office, that kind of violence usually emerged from the most troubled, most isolated people in society. Many killers found their inspiration online, at the extremesnot from anybody competing seriously for the top jobs in U.S. politics.

Politicians who ran as outsiders took extra care to distance themselves from anyone or anything implicated in violence. Ross Perot had no truck with that kind of extremism when he ran for president in 1992 and 1996. He may have held some cranky ideas, but his political behavior was straight-arrow. Anti-Iraq war groups hurled themselves into door-knocking, get-out-the-vote drives, and online fundraising and advertisingnothing like the turbulence of the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s.

In 2008, Barack Obama faced intense scrutiny as a presidential candidate over his acquaintance with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who had been leaders of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground in the 1960s. They had detonated bombs. The Weathermen never succeeded in hurting anyone outside their own organizationthree members of whom were killed by accidentbut that record was due more to good luck than good intentions. At one of the debates between Obama and Hillary Clinton that year, the moderator, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Obama to explain how he could have served for three years with Ayers on the board of an educational foundation and done a campaign event in the Ayers-Dohrn living room. Obama answered,

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, whos a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. Hes not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow, as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesnt make much sense, George.

Yet that was not enough for some. First Clinton, then the Republican nominee John McCain, questioned Obamas judgment and character. McCains running mate, Sarah Palin, accused Obama of palling around with terrorists. That charge was exaggerated to absurdity. But it was founded on a recognition that palling around with terrorists would be a bad thing for a president to do, if true. (The final word on its untruth was spoken by Ayers himself in 2013. Obamas not a radical. I wish he were, but hes not.)

A dozen years later, Trump draws support not from people with violent pasts, but from people with violent presents. He thanks and praises them. More than any politician since the days of Lester Maddox and Orville Faubus, Trump made violence integral to his political appeal from the beginning to the end of his presidential career. This is truly a change in American lifeand possibly a change that will be hard to undo.

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Its Not Only Trump on Trial - The Atlantic